The idea of human rights in ancient Indian society

Here I seek to explore the cosmopolitan foundations of the idea of human rights. The argument begins by considering the popularity of the idea of human rights in a globalized and fast-moving commodified and digital culture. At this point I consider whether the idea of human rights might be considered to be a modern utopia similar to the role that art and nature played in the Romantic movements of the 19th century. Further, I defend human rights against those who simply see it as a form of neoliberalism or as largely ineffective against the power of the state. At this point I investigate some of the Durkheimian work within cultural sociology that has sought to investigate human rights as a form of moral community. The main problem with this view is that it has little to say about human freedom. However, viewed through a cultural lens, the global spread of human rights is connected to the idea of human dignity. While there is never likely to be a global consensus on this term, it does retain an important philosophical anchoring in Kantian ideas. More recently this debate has been revived by the critical reception of the work of Agamben and his idea of ‘bare life’. If human rights can indeed be connected to the struggle for a dignified and meaningful life, then the idea of ‘bare life’ remains an important conceptual advance. However, by considering the work and legacy of Du Bois, Gilroy and others, we can also see how the term dignity might take on other meanings in different settings. Finally, I argue that the idea of dignity and human rights could yet provide an important focus for resistance against the imperatives of capital and state in these neoliberal times.

In a recent issue of The International Journal of Human Rights (1/2 Summer 1997) Professor Chris Brown, a scholar distinguished particularly for his integration of the disciplines of international relations and political theory, launched a forceful attack on the idea of universal human rights. This response argues that Professor Brown's attack has three targets ‐ human rights activists, the idea of human rights and the philosophy of liberal universalism ‐ and that it fails in each case. It attacks human rights activists unsuccessfully because it caricatures their beliefs. It fails to undermine the idea of universal human rights because its own ethical theory requires some version of that idea. And it fails to refute liberal universalism because its own supposed alternative is implicitly both liberal and universalist. This article concludes by affirming that the very importance and contested character of the idea of universal human rights entails that serious critiques should be welcomed, and that Professor Brown's attack, though unsuccessful, has opened up an important space for dialogue.

This article compares and analyzes the idea of human rights in Abrahamic religions. For this purpose, it reviews Abramamic religions’ contribution to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), their theological interpretations of rights-claiming culture, and human dignity. The article identifies two components that have shaped their varied notion of human rights. The first is that the religions have regarded the universalist claim of human rights as a moral challenge against their religious doctrines, which was established to preserve their Divine revelations. The second is that their historical experiences - religious persecution for Judaism, the Enlightenment for Christianity, and the West European Colonialism for Islam - have respectively shaped their initial hostility towards the idea of human rights. The concept of human rights is commonly considered to be founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Western experience of the Enlightenment. Judaism and Christianity, however, alongside Islam, have in actuality often repudiated the idea of universal human rights following the adoption of the UDHR. This paper demonstrates that this conceptual distance between religion and human rights has ultimately been narrowed due to an increase in shared dialogue. In short, the idea of human rights has earned its universality in Abrahamic religions through a set of debates and compromises.

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Principles of Hindu EthicsAlban G. WidgeryAlban G. Widgery Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 40, Number 2Jan., 1930 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/intejethi.40.2.2377977 Views: 12Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The International Journal of Ethics (1890-1938), which is continued by Ethics (1938-present). PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Anjali Kanojia Śarīra (Body), (Jan 2022): 1426–1433.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1188-1_839Sabrina D. MisirHiralall Defining Devotional Hindu Dance, (Apr 2021): 61–93.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70619-7_3Holger C. Bringmann, Nicole Bringmann, Michael Jeitler, Stefan Brunnhuber, Andreas Michalsen, Peter Sedlmeier Meditation Based Lifestyle Modification (MBLM) in outpatients with mild to moderate depression: A mixed-methods feasibility study, Complementary Therapies in Medicine 56 (Jan 2021): 102598.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2020.102598Anjali Kanojia Śarīra (Body), (Sep 2021): 1–8.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_839-2Anjali H. Kanojia Śarīra (Body), (May 2020): 1–8.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_839-1Santia Parmart The idea of human rights in ancient Indian society, European Law Review 9, no.11 (Jan 2017): 01–01.https://doi.org/10.21859/eulawrev-09013

Despite the fact that a lot has been written about human rights, there is no grounded concept of human rights. Human rights in domestic ethics have long been viewed in a positive way - as an ideal, as a value, as a minimum moral or an analog of universal morality. The article traces the hypothesis of the emergence of the idea of natural human rights, the historical change in its value-normative content in phi-losophy and the role in politics, and, in particular, its fate at the present time, when the idea of human rights has become the value kernel of the ideology of globalization. The main arguments of the critics of human rights are analyzed, expanded or refined, the practice of using human rights as a means for solving some other tasks and value transformations of the idea of human rights in connection with this instrumental application is considered. This approach opens the prospect of a professional philosophical discussion of this topic.

Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Ambedkar henceforth) is not merely known as the chief architect of the Indian constitution, social activist, philosopher, and social reformer but also as a great human rights defender in India. His idea and vision of human rights have been referencing points for creating an egalitarian society and formulating social policies. Despite his strong vision, teaching, and philosophy about an equal and just society, the pedagogy of social work is underutilized in social work education. His ideas of human rights were enshrined in the Indian constitution which even prevented marginalized social groups such as Dalit (Dalits are ex-untouchable caste group who live at the bottom in Indian social structure), tribal, and women from exploitation and protect their human rights. We argue that Ambedkar’s strong vision for a just and egalitarian society, and his rights and policy-based framework are key human rights features to introduce in the curriculum of social work education within India and outside India. This will not merely equip social work professionals to be better human rights defenders but also equip them significantly to contribute to creating a just and equal society.

Much attention has been paid to whether and how China has responded to international criticisms of its human rights record to improve its domestic human rights; however, few studies have examined China’s discourse on human rights for clues of potential continuities and changes in attitudes toward and policy-making of human rights. China’s deeply embedded philosophical and cultural traditions shed light on its ideas of citizenship and human rights, and the reciprocal relation between the individual and community. This chapter elucidates four main ideological orientations—Confucianism, liberalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism—that clarify the shifting understandings of citizenship and human rights in Chinese history. The legacy of Chinese traditions have affected the development of human rights over the centuries, and the selection, interpretation, and promotion of human rights varied under different Chinese leaderships during different periods in history. This chapter firstly examines elements of human rights found in Confucian thought. It then illuminates the liberal orientations, mainly developed in the late Qing and early ROC periods, adopted by the reformists to introduce human rights into Chinese society for its nation-building. Next, it introduces how ideas of human rights have been shaped and evolved in the socialist China for the national ends. These cultural and historical traditions and notions suggest that deeply imbedded Chinese philosophical and cultural traditions have supported a meaningful framework for conceptualizing human rights in China.

These reflections elaborates the theory of The Idea of Human Rights by addressing a topic that theory attempts to bracket: international and regional judicialization in the form of international courts and tribunals. Using the method of reflective equilibrium, the article argues that this exclusion is inconsistent. Including these international courts and tribunals ('ICs') prompts several changes to the original theory, and opens new research questions. The original theory is on the one hand too narrow regarding both the objectives and tools of international mechanisms of corrective concern. The account should consider further subsidiary modes of support. On the other hand the theory is too broad, in that it gives insufficient guidance to the judges of ICs and others able to effect changes. This leaves the theory incomplete, and open to similar criticism as the book raised against others. Accounts of the theory presented in The Idea of Human Rights,and of ICs and their roles regarding human rights allow us to explore some implications of ICs for The Idea of Human Rights.We then consider how if at all The Idea of Human Rights can guide international judges.

These reflections elaborates the theory of The Idea of Human Rights by addressing a topic that theory attempts to bracket: international and regional judicialization in the form of international courts and tribunals. Using the method of reflective equilibrium, the article argues that this exclusion is inconsistent. Including these international courts and tribunals (‘ICs’) prompts several changes to the original theory, and opens new research questions. The original theory is on the one hand too narrow regarding both the objectives and tools of international mechanisms of corrective concern. The account should consider further subsidiary modes of support. On the other hand the theory is too broad, in that it gives insufficient guidance to the judges of ICs and others able to effect changes. This leaves the theory incomplete, and open to similar criticism as the book raised against others. Accounts of the theory presented in The Idea of Human Rights,and of ICs and their roles regarding human rights allow us to explore some implications of ICs for The Idea of Human Rights.We then consider how if at all The Idea of Human Rights can guide international judges.

Christoph Menke The “Aporias of Human Rights” and the “One Human Right”: Regarding the Coherence of Hannah Arendt’s Argument IN 1 9 4 9 , IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NEWLY founded United Nations had adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948, Hannah Arendt published—first in English and rapidly afterwards in German—a short text that was noth­ ing less than a scathing critique of the recent attempts to reanimate the idea of human rights as political foundation (Arendt, 1949b).1 Arendt pointed to the declaration’s complete conceptual confusion, which would “invariably [lead] to philosophically absurd and politically unre­ alistic claims such as that each man is born with the inalienable right to unemployment insurance or an old age pension” (Arendt, 1949b: 34). This confusion corresponds to a conspicuous “lack of reality” (Arendt, 1949b: 37) that, for Arendt, the thinker of political judgment, of the political as practice of judgment and of judgment as political, was arguably one of the gravest objections to be raised against a political action. W hat she objected to in her critique is the fact that recent attempts to reformulate human rights merely repeat, in spirit and in attitude, the traditional declarations formulated at the end of the social research Vol 74 : No 3 : Fall 2007 739 eighteenth century without accounting for the profound crisis that has befallen the idea of human rights since those rights failed in the face of totalitarian politics. We do not know if Hannah Arendt had the final version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at hand when writing her text.2 However, given the even sharper repetition of her critical diagnosis in the famous ninth chapter of The Origins of Totalitarianism, which was published two years after the essay, we have no indication that Arendt would have been convinced the declaration was an adequate response to the totalitarian challenge ofhuman rights, despite the fact that the preamble proclaimed it to be an expression of the “outrage” of the “conscience of mankind” in view of the “barba­ rous acts” committed by totalitarianism. In fact, Arendt rephrases her critique in such a way that an adequate response to the totalitarian challenge to human rights seemed to be by and large impossible as such—at least a response that would be given in the name of human rights. It is in her book on totalitarianism that Arendt formulates the “aporias of the Rights of Man”3 as a way of describing the confusing situation into which totalitarian politics brought human rights—not only the possibility of practically realizing human rights but the very idea of human rights itself is called into question. An aporia, however, is a situation with no solution. At first glance, there seems to be surprising agreement, even among authors who work with Arendt from very different angles, as to how we must understand her diagnosis of a crisis of human rights deep­ ened to the point of an aporia. Giorgio Agamben concludes from this diagnosis that we have to abandon “decidedly, without reservation, the fundamental concepts through which we have so far represented the subjects of the political (Man, the Citizen and his rights [...])” (Agamben, 2000: 16). Jean Cohen draws the opposite conclusion: she holds that in order to save the idea of human rights we need to counter the “disdain for universalistic argumentation” expressed in Arendt’s critique of the declaration of human rights, and reconstruct a “moral principle (i.e., a universal principle of justice)” (Cohen, 1996: 183).4Just like Agamben, Cohen reads Arendt’s diagnosis of a crisis or even the aporia of the idea 740 social research of human rights as exhibiting their untenability. However, instead of surpassing Arendt like Agamben, she criticizes her for this diagnosis. The title of Arendt’s essay in English asks the skeptical question: ‘“The Rights of Man’: What Are They?” This, however, is not the title she chose for the German version of the text published a little later. Instead of the ambivalent question that we find in the English version, the German version is entitled with the assertive statement Es gibt nur ein einziges Menschenrecht: ’’There Is Only One...

lecture began at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 23, and was given by Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University; the discussant was Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University. ** THE GLOBAL STATUS OF HUMAN RIGHTS By Amartya Sen I feel very honored to have the opportunity to give the Grotius Lecture at this august forum. I cannot claim to be a legal scholar, with any expertise on international law, and I cannot hide my sense of inadequacy in giving this lecture in the name of one of the pioneering thinkers on law in general and international law in particular. But I take some encouragement from the fact that the great Hugo Grotius showed in his own trail-blazing work a deep interest in linking legal thinking to other disciplines of human thought. Grotius was particularly partial to poetry, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau had noted, in comparing Grotius's ideas with those of Thomas Hobbes. In his book Emile, Rousseau even went on to say: The truth is that their [Hobbes's and Grotius's] principles are exactly the same; they only differ in their expression. They also differ in their method. Hobbes relies on sophisms, and Grotius on the poets; all the rest is the same. (1) Whether or not we accept Rousseau's thesis (I shall come to that question later on in this lecture), it can certainly be argued that Grotius had a noticeable passion for linking up different disciplines of what can be called human reasoning. Many of his arguments make good use of what appears reasonable in common human thought. Indeed, the idea that the sea is a shared territory, which all are free to use--an idea that Grotius discussed in his book Free Sea (published in 1609) with powerful appeal to the common understanding of reasonableness--provides a general view of political normativity that is not parasitic on legislated law by one nation or another. I intend to take that as my point of departure, since the idea of human rights makes a similar appeal to the political normativity of rights that all human beings are supposed to have. That, to be sure, is not Grotius's claim, but there is clearly a strong analogy here. At least one of the concepts of human rights--and one which I would like to pursue in this lecture--shares with Grotius's ideas (including the argument for the shared freedom of the sea), the understanding that certain basic entitlements come not from specific national legislations, but from the recognition that these freedoms, to which people in general could be taken to be entitled, come from a general appreciation of ethical normativity, rather than any specific territorial legislation. global status of human rights can be seen in a similar normative perspective. There are still many issues to sort out in pursuing this line of thought, since it is a complicated claim, which can be resisted in many different ways. To defend that approach, we have to address several points of reasoned resistance to the idea of human rights that have been quite powerful in practice, and they demand reasoned examination and scrutiny, which we must not evade. To give the idea its due, we have to examine in particular what is entailed by the recognition that some particular claim should count as a human right. This raises some general questions. How should we think about the basis of human rights? What is the nature of the discipline of human rights, which can give plausibility to the claims of such rights? These are questions that I must address in this talk. (2) LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS How, then, does the idea of human rights relate to law? It is not surprising that there is a strong temptation to link human rights to law. While the idea of human rights is of comparatively recent origin, the concept of legal rights is old, well-established and widely used. …

Emergence of the idea of human rights in V— VI centuries BC in ancient policies and emergence of the principle of citizenship became a major step on the way of humanity towards freedom and progress. The idea and practice of freedom and human rights was given to the world by the most famous of all ancient civilizations — Athens in the views of Heraclitus, Democritus, Protagoras, Antiphont, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, etc. Ancient Greek ideas about human rights formed as a part of mythological views that the polis or the citystate and its laws are of divine origin and are based on divine justice. Further development of sociophilosophical and political-legal concepts of human rights in Ancient Greece occurred in search and substantiation, along with the divine origin, of objective natural-legal basis for the existence of the polis, its laws and social existence of people. Natural-legal ideas of ancient Greek thinkers about freedom and equality of all human beings further developed in Ancient Rome, and especially in the philosophical and legal views of the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero, the ancient Roman thinker, philosopher and orator. In their teaching on human rights, the natural-legal idea of freedom and equality was extended beyond the narrow polis and ethnic framework and was expanded to all members of the humankind as fellow citizens of a single cosmopolitan state. According to the results of the conducted research, the author notes that the ancient thinkers, prominent representatives of philosophical, legal, and political thought of that time laid the foundations of the doctrine of human rights, which was further developed in the medieval beliefs of medieval representatives, especially in the views of the authors of the liberal world outlook of the New times. The English and American Age of Enlightenment, French bourgeoisdemocratic revolution have become a new important milestone and a new stage in theoretical development and practical realization of the centuries-old aspirations of people about their rights, freedom and equality of all people on the Earth.

The purpose of the article is to find modern approaches to justify the latest versions of the human rights ideas for different countries of the world. The article proposes a position that it is urgent for the implementation of theoretical efforts to find universal theories of substantiation of the idea of human rights that could be adopted by non-European countries. Methodology. The article uses an analytical and methodology of intercultural discourse; as well as the principles of cultural and historical analysis, systemicity, comparative-legal method, which will ensure the integrity of the study and will enable the latest approaches to the substantiation of the idea of human rights. Scientific novelty lies in the fact that in the modern legal discourse, several approaches to the current substantiation of the idea of human rights were revealed. Among them, one can distinguish theory of human rights that come out: self-limitation of negative human manifestations; ontology of human existence spheres; Ideas of human identity and intercultural legal discourse. Conclusions. The study managed to identify various approaches to the current substantiation of the idea of human rights. All of them refuse educational approaches to understanding human rights as natural, or transcendental in essence. Instead, relying on modern philosophical and legal paradigms, there is a search for the latest theories that would substantiate the possibility of universal principles that will ensure the development and implementation of universal legal norms for non-western countries of the world. Indicative here is the theory of intercultural legal discourse, which demonstrates promising opportunities for the implementation of this goal. Further development of an acceptable person's theory of human rights, in our opinion, is connected with the analyzed concepts, among which the intercultural legal approach is able to play a special role. Keywords: right; philosophy of law; human rights; human rights theory; natural law; intercultural legal discourse.

Inspired by a 1988 trip to El Salvador, Michael J. Perry's new book is a personal and scholarly exploration of the idea of human rights. Perry is one of our nation's leading authorities on the relation of morality, including religious morality, to politics and law. He seeks, in this book, to disentangle the complex idea of human by way of four probing and interrelated essays. * The initial essay, which is animated by Perry's skepticism about the capacity of any secular morality to offer a coherent account of the idea of human rights, suggests that the first part of the idea of human rights-the premise that every human being is sacred or inviolable-is inescapably religious. * Responding to recent criticism of rights talk, Perry explicates, in his second essay, the meaning and value of talk about human rights. * In his third essay, Perry asks a fundamental question about human rights: Are they universal? In addressing this question, he disaggregates and criticizes several different varieties of relativism and then considers the implications of these different relativist positions for claims about human rights. * Perry turns to another fundamental question about human in his final essay: Are they absolute? He concludes that even if no human rights, understood as moral rights, are absolute or unconditional, some human rights, understood as international legal rights, are-and indeed, should be-absolute. In the introduction, Perry writes: all the influential-indeed, formative-moral ideas to take center stage in the twentieth century, like democracy and socialism, the idea of human (which, again, in one form or another, is an old idea) is, for many, the most difficult. It is the most difficult in the sense that it is, for many, the hardest of the great moral ideas to integrate, the hardest to square, with the reigning intellectual assumptions of the age, especially what Bernard Williams has called 'Nietzsche's thought': 'There is not only no God, but no metaphysical order of any kind...' For those who accept 'Nietzsche's thought', can the idea of human possibly be more than a kind of aesthetic preference? In a culture in which it was widely believed that there is no God or metaphysical order of any kind, on what basis, if any, could the idea of human long survive? The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries will appeal to students of many disciplines, including (but not limited to) law, philosophy, religion, and politics. Of all the influential-indeed, formative-moral ideas to occupy centre stage in the twentieth century, the notion of human is for many the most difficult.

The idea of human rights has a home in multiple domains: human rights are the subject of a vibrant international activist movement, of a growing body of international law, and of a burgeoning branch of moral and political philosophy. Given this fact, how should philosophers understand the appropriate relationship between a philosophical theory of human rights and the existing international human rights practices? There is a general sense among philosophers that ‘‘human rights’’ is, as James Griffin puts it, ‘‘a theoretical term,’’ one developed (albeit without what Griffin calls ‘‘sufficient determinateness of sense’’) by political theorists and moral philosophers, and that the point of human rights law and activism is to attempt to realize the idea expressed by this term. On this view, philosophy’s contribution to existing human rights practice is to provide a theory of moral human rights – as Griffin would put it, a ‘‘completion’’ of the incomplete theoretical term. For such a purpose, philosophers only need to do the kind of theoretical work they have always done; engagement with any of the human rights practices is unnecessary. Charles Beitz, in his recent book, The Idea of Human Rights, explicitly rejects this view of what the philosophy of human rights is for; on his view, the philosophy of human rights should ‘‘treat international human rights as a normative practice to be grasped sui generis and consider how the idea of a human rights functions within it.’’ Beitz aims to develop a ‘‘practical conception’’ of human rights, according to